Tech Time Warp of the Week: Watch Steve Ballmer Laugh at the Original iPhone

Share

Tech Time Warp of the Week: Watch Steve Ballmer Laugh at the Original iPhone

When Apple unveils some sort of computerized mega watch in Cupertino next week—inside the same venue where Steve Jobs unveiled the original Macintosh 30 years ago—most of the world will ooh and ahh. Over and over again. Those with a more nuanced view of the universe will question whether a smartwatch is really what the people want. And, certainly, various Apple competitors will carefully explain why their wearables make more sense than the one flaunted by Tim Cook.

But no reaction will compare with the one that emerged from Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer when Apple unveiled the original iPhone in 2007. As you can see from the video above—yet another gem in the seemingly endless list of wonderfully entertaining Ballmer videos from years past—the big man's response to the original iPhone, one of the most important devices in the history of computing, was to laugh at it.

"Five hundred dollars? Fully subsidized? With a plan?" Ballmer chuckles in the way that only Ballmer chuckles. "That is the most expensive phone in the world. And it doesn't appeal to business customers because it doesn't have a keyboard, which makes it not a very good email machine."

Yes, with more than seven years of hindsight, it's easy to make fun of him. But it was nearly as easy without any hindsight. In 2007, Microsoft's flagship handheld was the Zune.

Certainly, he does says that the iPhone may "sell very well." But then he says Microsoft can hold its own. As he explains, a $99 Motorola Q Windows phone "will do music. It will do internet. It will do email. It will do instant messaging. I kinda look at that and I say: 'I like our strategy.'"

On the one hand, you could argue that this is merely what he had to say, that he had no choice but to talk up his own business. But history shows that Microsoft, unlike Google, took far too long to follow Apple's lead, and now, it's still struggling to play catchup. Plus, Larry Page and Sergey Brin never chuckled at the iPhone. At least not like that.

1Update 00:42 EST 09/06/14: An earlier version of this story incorrectly attributed Ballmer's quote about the Motorola Q to the Zune and incorrect ly described the Zune.